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“Would you leave again?”

“No. A heart doesn’t heal as easily as you might think. Breaking your own isn’t a path I would wish you to travel down.” Milan sounded so sad, the edges of it folding on itself as if this sadness, this grief, was a giant well she hadn’t ever been able to escape.

“I can’t save her and save the rest of us.”

“Are you certain about that?”

“Yes. Her people are here to take our water and our lives. If I protect her, I won’t be able to win this war.” Soulara’s chest tightened at the thought. This was all assuming Autumn allowed Soulara to protect her in the first place, and hadn’t the fight on land proved that she wouldn’t? Hadn’t that told the both of them that they weren’t made for each other, that love wasn’t enough?

“Soulara.” Milan put her hand gently beneath Soulara’s chin and lifted it until their eyes met. “Are you certain she needs you to save her? Are you certain she isn’t able to save herself?”

Soulara opened her mouth and closed it again.

She hadn’t considered Autumn’s ability to save herself. The woman she loved, because yes, she did love her, was a force to be reckoned with. Soulara hadn’t truly realized that until she had to stand up to Autumn in that room with those humans. The civilians who weren’t soldiers. Autumn had taken a stand.

She’d made a choice.

And she had protected the innocent, which was exactly what Soulara would have done. It had been why she’d walked away without killing everyone in that room. It was why she’d stopped. Had they made the same choice?

“I can see your mind is now thinking beyond the rules of your throne.” Milan smiled and gently moved her hands from beneath Soulara’s chin.

Soulara nodded and pushed herself off the moss covered stone. She was thinking. Thinking far too many things that all fought to be the one she followed.

But despite the clamor in her mind, it sparked ideas inside her. It sparked hope and energy. The energy to fight back, to forget the rules that bound her and contained the limits that would leave them dying in defeat.

These ideas weren’t appearing out of thin air. She found small seeds of them pushed back behind her fire and fear. Fire to protect her people and fear about being a good enough leader to be able to do so.

Autumn wasn’t weak. Autumn wasn’t cruel or evil.

She was unique and wonderful and special. Could it be that some of the humans on her planet thought the same as Autumn? Would they share her disgust at learning the truth about their leaders? Would they continue to follow if they all knew the genocide they caused when they stole from other planets, leaving them devoid of all resources?

She didn’t know. There was so much to do, even more than she had already filled her hands with. It might not work, it might do nothing to save the lives of her people. But she would follow this line. If even one person could be saved who might otherwise have perished, the path was worth following.

“Soulara?”

“Huh?” Soulara turned toward her mother. She had been swimming back and forth in front of the moss-covered stone where Milan still sat.

“You’re a brave and wonderful person.”

“I’m not.” Soulara shook her head. “But I’m working on becoming one.”

“Have they asked for the soul stones yet?”

Soulara stopped moving, stopped breathing as she stared at her mother.

“Don’t forget I lived in the castle with your father for many years before I left.” Milan seemed to choke on the last word.

Soulara had never asked openly. She had never been told exactly what had happened the day her mother left and never returned. It had never seemed to matter to her before, the details.

“Why did you leave?”

“I told you, I couldn’t adjust to the different ways of living within Reine.” Milan toyed with the moss on the stone, playing her fingers through it.

“But why that day? What made you decide that it was time?”

“It doesn’t matter, Soulara.” Milan smiled. To an untrained eye, it might have even seemed genuine. But, despite the years of estrangement between her mother’s leaving and when they began to see each other again, Soulara knew her mother too well.

“Of course it matters.”